Many different types of golf games are available to the public today, including standard golf courses, driving ranges, miniature golf-type putting courses, and even computerized indoor golfing games. Most of these golf games, however, do not enable a person to use all of his skills by using the entire range of golf clubs. Although many driving ranges have target greens that a person can aim at, the greens are not necessarily positioned such that the person can see how successful he has been in causing his ball to land on one of those greens.
One golf game available at the present time provides a target and is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,336,939. According to this patent a golf chipping and putting game is constructed of a number of pockets which are used as targets by the player. This is a variation of miniature golf in that high-angle irons can be used to try to place the ball in one of the target pockets. In this game, however, it is not intended that a golfer can practice the use of long irons or woods for hitting target greens at a realistic distance.
Another golfing game that is presently available is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,708,173, in which a golfer attempts to hit a ball into one of several holes on a nearby green. As a ball is hit into the hole, the player receives a score on a scoreboard associated with each green. In this game, however, the greens are so close to a player that the player again cannot practice his long irons or woods in an attempt to hit a green at a realistic distance.
Existing driving ranges often have small greens that include target flags at which to aim. At such driving ranges, the greens are typically located at varying distances from the driving tees, from as little as one hundred years to more than 250 yards. Colored balls may occasionally be used when such a driving range is conducting some type of promotion, such as a hole-in-one contest. The present driving ranges do not, however, include any type of automatic scoring capabilities. Even the hole-in-one contest using colored balls requires a person to eventually inspect the hole to see if any ball found its way into the hole; the colored ball is not automatically sensed.
The presently available golfing games that give a player an automatic score as that player achieves success in hitting a target are all designed for either putting or very short distance chip shots. In addition, in some of the games available at the present time, the targets are so small and at such a distance that it would be very difficult to obtain any score whatsoever. Finally, each of the games available at the present time requires construction of a special facility and could not be easily retrofitted into an existing driving range. None of the prior art games are intended for use as a driving range to practice driving skills at realistic distances.